October 2018 e-Report

President's Pen

Chief Executive's Report

Industry News

Partner News

New Members

President's Pen

PR
helps strawberries bounce back

The awful strawberry sabotage story that
came out of Australia in September has provided some timely lessons for PRINZ
practitioners on this side of the ditch. We were relatively unaffected here in
New Zealand – save for the removal of Australian strawberries from all
Countdown stores two weeks before our own strawberries were due to come
on-stream.

But we can learn from our Australian
public relations counterparts, who have come up with a number of clever
strategies to counter the calamitous situation faced by the country’s
strawberry growers. Their fruit was being dumped just as the season was getting
underway. Australians had stopped buying strawberries and were likely to remain
cautious for some time before they had sufficient confidence the berries would
not be tampered with. Many growers faced ruin.

PR strategies were quick to the rescue.
The biggest one - #smashastrawb – went viral on social media with thousands of
people sharing recipes and tips to use up the strawberries that were reduced as
low as four punnets for a dollar. “Cut ‘em up, don’t cut ‘em out” the campaign
said, “to support Aussie farmers through these berry tough times”.

A brewery put out a special edition of
strawberry flavoured beer, and celebrities and politicians joined in the
campaign to produce recipes and examples of strawberries being used in bulk.

The campaign was led from the top – the
Premier of Queensland and the Prime Minister both got right behind it, as
copycat strawberry tampering spread across the country.

As PRINZ President, I was interviewed by a
journalist from Rural News. After praising the Aussie social media response, I
said it would be a good idea PR people in New Zealand could add to their Crisis
Management Plans for our food clients. All of us were well versed, I said, in
being prepared for a manufacturing or food processing crisis – we have to be
when saboteurs are out there, but also when there are so many things that can
go wrong getting produce from the farm gate to the plate.

Let us all be reminded – it’s always a
good time to take a close look at your Crisis and Issues Management Plans and
ensure they’re right up to date. Including calling on patriotism and social
media to save the day.

Chief Executive's Report

Using Behaviour Insights to ‘work smarter not
harder’

As PR
professionals we are in the business of influencing people’s behaviour. Whether
it’s convincing residents to take action in advance of a disaster,
engaging a community in a public health initiative, changing the perception of
a brand to gain a new audience, or ensuring employees return home safely each
day, the success of our work is based on how well we engage with people to
drive a specific behavioural outcome.

Yes, many of our
PR campaigns deliver big results on tiny or non-existent budgets. But, wouldn’t
it be great if we could increase the likelihood of delivering better outcomes
to our organisations and clients? The trite ‘work smarter not harder’ mantra might
actually apply if we use the principles of behavioural science to inform our
campaign strategies.

Much as we like to
think we are, we are not always rational beings. Understanding the way our
brains are pre-programmed will help us recognise these inherent biases - and
how this knowledge should inform our approach to campaign strategies and
tactics.

Senior Behavioural
Strategist, Dan Bennett from Ogilvy Change in the UK will present a
participative seminar designed specifically for senior professionals on ‘How to
use Behavioural Insight to solve our biggest challenges’ in Auckland and
Wellington.

Over the course of
the day, we’ll cover the foundational concepts of behavioural science as well
as cover the MINDSPACE principles and how to add them to your PR toolbox. The
day will be highly interactive with case study sessions where participants
apply the MINDSPACE principles to specific public relations challenges.

Full details of
the Senior Professionals Event agenda are available here.

Industry News

MCSA, the
University of Waikato’s Management Communication Students Association, is
celebrating its tenth anniversary on October 4, 2018, and PRINZ has played a
key role in its success.

The event will
host graduates who were involved with MCSA over the years, current members of
MCSA, the Head of Waikato Management and Marketing School Associate Professor
Stuart Dillon, and Ms Lee Cowan, Communication Manager for DairyNZ representing
PRINZ.

Coincidentally,
it is held in the same meeting room where MCSA was launched on September 17th,
2008, as
a joint venture between Public Relations students and PRINZ. The launch was
attended by Fiona Cassidy, then PRINZ President, and Paul Dryden, then PRINZ
Executive Director.

Paul Dryden
once said that “Waikato Management Students were more of an asset to the
industry”. He was passionate about supporting PR students and providing them
with professional opportunities. PRINZ have followed his lead and sustained the
PRINZ affiliation with MCSA and the commitment to support PR students entering
the industry.

It is the
success of students of Management Communication at the University of Waikato,
especially those who were involved with MCSA, and the commitment of PRINZ to
support them over the past 10 years, that students and graduates will be
celebrating in the MCSA event on Thursday.

About MCSA

MCSA, the
University of Waikato Management Communication Students Association, aims to
link students to the Marketing, Communications and Public Relations industries
and provide them with industry experiences during their time at university. It
has been affiliated with PRINZ, the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand,
since 2008.